principles: unquestioning support for the peoples democratic dictatorship, CCP

leadership, socialism, and MarxismLeninismMao Zedong Thought.

Dengs chosen successor, Jiang Zemin, eases slowly into power, remaining
in Dengs shadow until the latters formal retirement at the end of 1992.
Thereafter, Jiang and his chief economic
troubleshooter, Vice-Premier (later Premier) Zhu
The Communist
Rongji successfully resolve a series of growing
Party maintains
economic problems by taming rampant inflation,
marketizing Chinas state-owned enterprises, and
its exclusive
reforming Chinas dysfunctional banking and tax
monopoly on
systems. By the time Deng dies in 1997, Chinas
political power,
economy is humming on all cylinders, averaging
and no dissent is
10 percent annual growth.
tolerated.
Early in the new century, Jiang attempts to reform
the Communist Party. Introducing his theory of
the three represents, Jiang encourages recruitment of members of Chinas
new class of capitalist entrepreneurs into the CCP. Several million
capitalists respond to his call.
With Jiangs retirement in 2003, a new generation of socialist technocrats
assumes power. Led by the new PRC president and party chief Hu Jintao,
Chinas leaders begin to address burgeoning problems of unbalanced
economic growth, extreme income polarization, environmental degradation,
and bureaucratic corruption. Under the slogan building a harmonious
society, the new leaders begin to restore welfare benefits eliminated during
the headlong rush to privatize the economy in the 1990s. Hu pledges to restore
tuition-free public education; subsidized health care; unemployment benefits;
and retirement pensions for workers, peasants, and migrant laborers.
Though they promote progressive social policies, the new Chinese leaders
do not initiate significant political reforms. The Communist Party maintains
its exclusive monopoly on political power, and no dissent is tolerated. The
mass media in China remain routinely subject to censorship, and all putative
challenges to CCP leadership are met with repressive force. Examples of
such repression were readily seen during the run-up to the Beijing Olympics
7